Et Tandem Euboicis Cumarum Adlabitur Oris

STOP

Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World

This article is one of nearly 500,000 scholarly works digitized and made freely available to everyone in
the world by JSTOR.

Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other
writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the
mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.

We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this
resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non-commercial
purposes.

Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/individuals/early-
journal-content .

JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people
discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching
platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit
organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact support@jstor.org.

The Classical Weekly

Vol. XV, No. 19

Monday, March 20, 1922

Whole No. 415

ET TANDEM EUBOICIS CUMARUM ADLABITUR
ORIS 1

Where did Aeneas, in Vergil's story, come to land
at the time of his visit to Cumae? The description of
his landing, in the beginning of Aeneid 6, includes no
designation of the place where it occurred, beyond the
vague phrase Euboicis Cumarum oris. These 'Eu-
boean coasts of Cumae' offered many landing-places,
for the territory of Cumae had extended to the East
as far as Puteoli, and to the South included the entire
promontory of Misenum, until Agrippa detached the
Portus Misenus when he selected it as a site for a
naval station 2 . Vergil's phrase, then, allows the
reader to seek the place of disembarkation not only
on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, where the hill of
Cumae rises close to the strand, but also in some inlet
of the Sinus Cumanus, as the Bay of Naples was
significantly named. The lack of precision shown by
Vergil here is said to be characteristic of him. Boissier
says 3 :

Virgile depeint les lieux le moins qu'il peut. Seule-
ment nous pouvons €tre surs que ce qu'il en dit est
toujours d'une verity scrupuleuse.

Heinze has noted the same trait of indifference 4 :

Der Ort als Lokal der Handlung spielt bei Vergil
dieselbe geringe Rolle wie in der antiken erzahlenden
Poesie iiberhaupt. . . . Es lasst sich schwer entscheiden
ob er selbst sich ein klares Bild der Lokalitat gemacht

hat.

Of Campania Vergil must have had a clear mental
picture, but so, he no doubt thought, had his readers,
to many of whom it was a familiar second home; it
was known to all as the site of frequented resorts and
of conspicuous public works of great magnitude, the
naval stations at Portus Iulius and Portus Misenus.
It would, perhaps, be natural for the poet, not much
interested in accuracy of topography, to be even less
accurate than usual in the Campanian part of his
poem.

Besides the words which stand as the title of this
paper, three Vergilian passages referring to the landing-
place are to be mentioned; no one of them is perfectly
exact.

(i) 6.697: stant sale Tyrrheno classes. These
words of Aeneas to Anchises are intended to give

»This paper was read ac the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of The
Classical Association of the Atlantic States, at Hunter College,
April 23. 1921.

2 For the facts of topography and history relat ng to the localities
with which this paper is concerned, I have relied mainly on
J. Beloch, Campanien im Altertum 2 , (Breslau, 1890). The value of
the book is enhanced by the fact that it incorporates, along with
the historical material, scientific publications, such as official
Italian geological surveys.

3 Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques, 125 (Paris, Hachette,
1899).

*Epische Technik 3 , 343, (Leipzig, 191s),

assurance that the ships are safe, in Italy at last,
rather than to tell just where they are. Anchises had
not asked that; he had said (694), Quam metui ne
quid Libyae tibi regna nocerent ! In the circumstances,
then, it is not possible to say that the phrase sale
Tyrrheno is necessarily a reference to the beach out-
side the gulf ; the waters of any inlet of the Tyrrhenian
Sea might be called Tyrrhenian, not inaccurately.

(2) 5.813. Tutus quos optas portus accedet Averni.
Neptune's promise to Venus that Aeneas shall reach
safely 'the harbor of Avernus' is not a proof that
Aeneas landed at Portus Iulius or at Baiae, as the
line quoted just above (6.697) is not sufficient evidence
to prove that he landed on the outer beach. Proba-
bly Portus Averni means simply 'the haven of the
land where Avernus is', Avernus being mentioned
because it was destined to be an important place in the
development of the story of Aeneas.

(3) 6.174: inter saxa virum <\. e. Misenum> spumosa
immerserat unda. There is some ground for the be-
lief that this passage does refer to a locality that may
be identified: rocks foaming with sea -water are a
part of the outer basin of the Portus Misenus, and do
not belong to any other place on 'the coasts of Cumae' 5 .
If there is here a genuine bit of local color, it is evi-
dence that Vergil imagined Aeneas's camp to be on
the coast inside the Bay of Naples, for Aeneas and
Achates found the body of Misenus as they walked
from the Sibyl's cave to the station of the ships; if
the ships had been on the outer coast, their path
would not have taken them to the place inter saxa
that later bore the dead man's name.

Turning from poetry to history, we find that in
ancient times, as far back as records go, the approach
to Cumae for travellers by sea was through one of the
ports of the Sinus Cumanus. At first that port was
Dicaearchia (Puteoli); later, when Dicaearchia be-
came independent of Cumae, Baiae was the usual
harbor 6 . The coastline of the Tyrrhenian Sea near
Cumae has not changed with time as the coasts of the
bay have changed, at Puteoli and elsewhere 7 ; and
to-day that outside beach is an inhospitable place,
without harbors, and with dunes hemming it in from
the cape of Misenum past Cumae to Licola 8 . There
is in that region just one place that might possibly
have been used as a harbor, the lagoon now called
Lago del Fusaro, anciently called Acherusia, a pool
south of Cumae, close to the sea, separated from it
by a narrow strip of sand 9 , and united with it by a

6 Beloch, 196.

"Beloch, 17, 90, 181, 191.

7 Beloch, 124. 8 Beloch. 26.

9 Seneca, Epp. 55, describes the beach between the sea and the
lagoon as being like a narrow road: hinc mari, illinc lacu. velut
angustum iter, cluditur.

145

146

THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY

[Vol. XV, No. 19, Whole No. 415

canal. In some editions of Baedeker's Guide to
Southern Italy this lagoon is said to be probably the
ancient harbor of Cumae, but I have not anywhere
found corroboration of this statement. Beloch (157)
not only speaks of Cumae as situated 'on a coast
without a harbor', but says outright thaat 'Cumae
possessed no harbor' (451). Furthermore, when he
treats of the Lago del Fusaro, and its canal (188-
189), he gives no opinion as to the exact date and
purpose of the canal. If there were good authority for
the idea that the lagoon by means of the canal was
made a harbor for Cumae, it seems likely that Beloch
would at least have mentioned it.

For boats of the Homeric type, however, a harbor,
in the sense of a safe anchorage, was of course not
needed; such boats could apparently be drawn up
on almost any beach; and, if the beach of Cumae
proved to be exposed, Aeneas's boats could even
perhaps have been dragged across the narrow 'road'
of sand into the Lago del Fusaro 10 . Vergil, who was
a good antiquary, may, therefore, have had in mind
a Homeric beaching of the ships, in spite of the ab-
sence of a harbor, and it might have occurred on the
outside coast, in spite of the custom of travellers in
Vergil's own time. Indeed, the inherent probability
of a landing near the hill of Cumae is so great that it
would hardly be questioned, Were there not extant a
version of the story of Aeneas in which the landing-
place is clearly inside the Sinus Cumanus.

According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.53.3),
the Trojans disembarked at Portus Misenus, and this
same story is apparently told by the author of the
Origo Gentis Romanae, and by Ovid. Dionysius
says that Aeneas, when he came to Campania, landed
in a fine deep harbor, named for Misenus who died
there. These words naturally refer to the Portus
Misenus. The passage in the Origo Gentis Romanae"
9.6 dealing with this subject is less clear, but 'a promon-
tory in Baian territory' is mentioned, and it might be
Misenum, indeed could hardly be any other.

Ovid's account of Aeneas's travels is in the Meta-
morphoses. We read there that Aeneas, after leaving
Sicily, sailed to Pithecussae. Then we come upon
these lines (14.101-106):

Has 12 ubi praeteriit, et Parthenopeia dextra
moenia deseruit, laeva de parte canori
Aeolidae tumulum, et loca feta palustribus undis,
litora Cumarum, vivacisque antra Sibyllae
intrat, et ad Manes veniat per Averna paternos
orat.
'When he had passed this place and had left the walled
town of Partnenope on his right, on the left-hand
side he landed at the hill of the tuneful son of Aeolus,
and in a region abounding in marshy pools, the shores
of Cumae, and entered the cave of the long-lived
Sibyl, and prayed that he might go through Avernus
to the abode of his father's spirit'.

Ovid here says, it seems, that Aeneas, as he sailed,
had Naples (Parthenopeia moenia) on his right and on

IP This possibility was saggested by Professor F. G. Moore.
_ "Postquam is <i. e. Aeneas >, multa maria permensus, appulsus
sit ad Italiae promontorium, quod est in Baiano circa Averni
lacum, ibique gubernatorem Misenum, morbo absumptum, sepul-
tum ab eo. — I give the text of F. Pichlmayr (in the Teubner
Series, ion).

"This word refers to Pithecussae.

his left the tumulus of Misenus — if laeva de parte
is equivalent to laeva (no other meaning is apparent).
On a boat going from Pithecussae straight to the beach
beside the hill of Cumae, the passengers of course
would have Misenum as well as Naples on the right;
but a boat entering the Bay of Naples has Misenum
on the left, and it remains on that quarter as the boat
rounds the promontory northward towards Baiae or
Puteoli, while Naples is then, roughly speaking, on
the right. Somewhere inside the promontory, then,
Ovid puts the landing; the precise place is not clear
because the structure of the sentence is ambiguous.
Where does the principal clause begin? In the trans-
lation given above, placing the landing at the hill of
Aeolus's son, the principal clause is regarded as be-
ginning with laeva de parte, but it would be difficult to
prove that Ovid meant it so; indeed the 'zeugma'
is rather harsh whereby tumulum, as well as loca and
antra, is taken as an object of intrat. Tumulum and
loca may belong with deseruit, in the temporal clause,
and litora may be the first word of the main clause;
if the passage is read thus, Ovid says that Aeneas
passed (deseruit) the hill of Misenus before he entered
'the coasts of Cumae and the Sibyl's cave', landing
probably at Baiae. It may even be argued that the
principal clause begins with et loca feta and that there-
fore only tumidum, besides moenia, is governed by
deseruit, loca going with intrat 13 . Also, some editors of
Ovid omit et before loca u (the word is missing in some
manuscripts), and others bracket all the words be-
tween deseruit and loca. We find the words thus
bracketed in Haupt's edition and in the Teubner
text of Merkel (1912), but not in the Teubner text of
Ehwald (1919). Merkel makes no comment. Haupt
has a note, saying that the idea which this passage,
without the excision, expresses, could arise only from
an ignorance of the topography and of the legend which
one should not impute to Ovid. But is this true?
If travellers in Ovid's time, and long before, regularly
landed at Baiae when going to Cumae, no ignorance of
topography is involved if Ovid imagined that Aeneas
landed there; and, as for the legend, Ovid's account
is in harmony with that given by Dionysius, placing
the disembarkation either at Portus Misenus or not
far beyond that place. Perhaps Ovid made no clear
distinction between the several localities, at times;
Propertius confuses them — Baiae, Misenum, Portus
Iulius — when he describes (3.18) the place where
Marcellus died, which was Baiae:

clausus ab umbroso qua alludit pontus Averno
fumida Baiarum stagna tepentis aquae,

qua iacet et Troiae tubicen Misenus arena,
et sonat Herculeo structa labore via.

Of critical comment in editions of Vergil there is
very little that bears on the question of the landing-
place. Heyne was convinced that it was outside the
Bay of Naples 15 :

13 Against this interpretation it is to be noted that the use of
el . . . -que to correlate two members of a sentence, in the sense of
both . . . and is rare, and is not attested for Ovid. Compare
Lane, Latin Grammar, 1663, and Gil dersleeve- Lodge, Latin
Grammar, 476, 5, c.

"For example, the Magnus edition (1914). Compare the note
ad loc, in Jahn's edition (1832).

16 Excursas III of Book 6.

March 20, 1922]

THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY

147

Infra Cumas, sub promontorium Misenum, appellunt
Troiani. Eo enim ducunt omnia, ut non in Baiano,
quod vulgo creditur, quodque alias narratum ex
Aurelio Victore 19 intelligitur, sed in Cumano littore
Troianorum classis stationem habuerit. Nee aliter
Ovidius tradit, ubi Vergili vestigiis insistit.

It is interesting to' note here that a hundred years ago
the belief was prevalent ("vulgo creditur") that the
landing-place was in Baiano, a belief which seems to
have disappeared pretty generally 17 , perhaps through
Heyne's influence. But after all Heyne states no
arguments: "omnia" should be itemized, if it is to
have weight. Nor does he explain how he under-
stands the passage of Ovid. In another place (Excur-
sus IV of Book 6) he quotes the passage from Dionysius
which was mentioned above, and says:

Virgilius discessit ab aliorum fide etiam in hoc, quod
non in Baiano sinu sed ultra Misenum versus Cumas
classem appulsam esse voluit.

Here Heyne acknowledges that the tradition as given
elsewhere than in the Aeneid is against his own view.

Norden makes no direct statement, in his edition of
Aeneid 6, of his opinion in the matter of the landing-
place, but there are hints that he took Misenum to be
the place. Commenting (on page 114) on the words
pars densa ferarum tecta rapit silvas (7-8), he says
that, at the place where the Trojans sought water
and wood, in Vergil's time rich men were building
luxurious country-houses, a Latin colony was founded,
and a naval station was established. In describing
Misenum, Beloch (190) says something very similar to
this, mentioning the same three characteristics; and,
since Norden used Beloch's Campanien as a topo-
graphical guide 18 , it is a safe inference that Norden's
description refers to Misenum. This view of his
opinion is corroborated by a part of his note on verses
1 56-1 57: "Von Cumae nach Misenum fuhrten und
fiihren noch heute zwei Wege". This information is
supplied by the editor at the moment when Aeneas,
leaving the Sibyl's cave, started on the way toward
his fleet, and is appropriate only if Aeneas was going
to Misenum.

Henry appears to have believed that the place was
Baiae; this is an inference from a note inhisAeneidea,
on Book 5. 813-814:

Tutus quos optas portus accedet Averni.

Unus erit tantum amissum quern gurgite quaeres.

Henry recommends Servius's punctuation of this
passage — full stop after accedet — and upholds the
superiority of this arrangement by the following
argument :

It strikes me that a Roman poet was more likely to
go out of his way to find a less ominous appellation for
a veritable porlas Averni, had he been under the
necessity of speaking of one, than to go out of his
way in search of so unlucky an equivoque for the port
of Baiae.

The sentence is mazy, but the impression it conveys
is that Baiae would not appear so suddenly upon the
scene unless in Henry's mind the thought of Aeneas
landing in Campania had been connected with Baiae.
It may be recalled here that, when Agrippa constructed
"a veritable portus Averni", by joining Lucrinus to
Avernus, the harbor received a very auspicious name,
Portus Iulius.

We may sum up thus. There is direct testimony
in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and in the Origo Gentis
Romanae, in Ovid, too, unless the text is altered, that
the legend told that Aeneas disembarked at Portus
Misenus or near it; there is the historical fact that
actual travellers to Cumae landed at Puteoli and
Baiae; in Vergil's account there is nothing that forces
the conclusion that he had in mind a place on the outer
coast, and there is one phrase — inter saxa — which
suggests the Portus Misenus. It is at least possible
that Vergil followed the same form of the Aeneas
legend as Dionysius and Ovid.

The Brearley School,
New York

Susan Fowler

REVIEWS

16 The reference here is to the passage quoted above in this paper
from the Origo Gentis Romanae, ascribed to Aurelius Victor.

17 However, a friend of the writer of this paper contributes the
information that an Italian guide affirmed that Aeneas landed at
Baiae. See also what is said below of Norden and Henry.

18 He says so in his commentary (page 116, bottom).

Roman Essays and Interpretations. By W. Warde

Fowler. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press (1920).

Pp. 290.
The Carmen Saeculare of Horace. By Tenney Frank.

American Journal of Philology 42.324-330 (October,

1921).
Horace Carm. I 14. By Walter Leaf. <The English>

Journal of Philology 34.283-289 (1918).

Since no review can do justice to such a volume as
Dr. Fowler's book, I set down, in very particular
fashion, its contents. After certain items are added
below, in square brackets, references to the periodicals
in which the articles were originally published.

Part I. The Latin History of the Word Religio,
7-15 [Transactions of the Congress for the History of
Religions, 1908]; The Original Meaning of the Word
Sacer, 15-24 [Journal of Roman Studies, 191 1]; Mun-
dus Patet, 24-37 [ibidem, 1912]; The Oak and the
Thunder-God, 37-41; The Toga Praetexta of Roman
Children, 42-52; Was the Flaminica Dialis Priestess
of Juno?, 52-55 [The Classical Review 9.474-476];
The Origin of the Lar Familiaris, 56-64; Fortuna
Primigenia, 64-70; Passing Under the Yoke, 70-75
[The Classical Review 27.48-51]; Note on Privately
Dedicated Roman Altars, 75-79; The Pontifices and
the Feriae: The Law of Rest-days, 79-90.

Part II. On the Date of the Rhetorica ad Herenni-
um, 91-99; The Lex Frumentaria of Gaius Gracchus,
99-110 [English Historical Review, 1905]; The Carmen
Saeculare of Horace and its Performance, June 3d,
17 B. C, m-126 [The Classical Quarterly 4.145-155];
On the Laudatio Turiae and its Additional Fragment,
126-138 [The Classical Review 19.261-266]; An
Unnoticed Trait in the Character of Julius Caesar,
138-145 [The Classical Review 30.68-71].

Part III. Ancient Italy and Modern Borneo: A
Study in Comparative Culture, 146-165 [Journal of
Roman Studies, 1916]; Parallela Quaedam, 165-181
(the items here are The Plague of Locusts in 125 B. C. :
And a Modern Parallel, 165-167; Plagues of Field-
Voles [Arvicola arvalis] in Ancient and Modern Times,